Supermicro® Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Solution Using Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)

Supermicro's HCI offerings are Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) validated software-defined data centers (SDDC) premium solutions that are built on Supermicro’s industry leading All-NVMe/Hybrid systems and Windows Server 2016.

With the launch of Supermicro's latest X11 generation of SuperServers, this solution family now includes highest performing and flexible X11 2U Ultra servers, and 2U 4-node BigTwin systems that support Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors.

Along with X10 generation solution SKUs, the Supermicro HCI family delivers the full capability of a comprehensive software-defined data center by leveraging NVMe SSD drives, RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) enabled network components, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), and satisfy customers’ different needs for performance, capacity and cost.

Highlights

Supermicro HCI premium solutions provide the following benefits:

  • Performance: Industry highest performance delivered by new generation of Supermicro X11 systems
  • Density: Support 40 VMs per server node
  • Features: Certified to support full Windows Server 2016 SDDC features
  • Ease of use: Factory validated and certified for Microsoft HCI Premium
  • Scalability: Easy to scale out with predictable storage efficiency and performance improvements

Solution Features

Below is the feature comparison between Supermicro HCI Premium Solutions and other WSSD offerings.

  Converged Software-Defined Storage HCI Standard Solution Supermicro HCI Premium Solution
Security
BitLocker, Shielded Virtual Machines     ✓
Windows Defender, Credential Guard, Device Guard ✓ ✓ ✓
Compute
Hyper-V   ✓ ✓
Network
Software-defined networking capabilities     ✓
NIC teaming, vSwitches, SMB Direct ✓ ✓ ✓
Storage
Storage Spaces Direct software-defined storage ✓ ✓ ✓
Management
Virtual Machine Manager ✓ ✓ ✓
Operations Manager ✓ ✓ ✓
Servers
x86 industry standard hardware ✓ ✓ ✓

Specification

Supermicro new generation X11 HCI premium solutions

Supermicro X11 SuperServers are designed to deliver the highest performance, flexibility, scalability and serviceability to demanding IT environments, and to power mission-critical enterprise workloads.

The X11 HCI premium solution currently offer 3 SKUs: SYS-6029U-S2D contains 3 nodes of 2U rackmount SYS-6029U-E1CR4 Ultra servers with 3.5" SAS/SATA drives; SYS-2029U-S2D contains 3 nodes of 2U rackmount SYS-2029U-E1CR4T Ultra servers with 2.5" SAS/SATA drives; SYS-2029BT-HNC0R-S2D consist of a single 2U 4 nodes SYS-2029BT-HNC0R BigTwin™ server.

Each node is configured with dual Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, 128GB of DDR4 memory, and NVMe SSDs as caching devices. The 3.5" drive bay Ultra server 6029U is configured with dual Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI 40GbE NICs on each server node; the 2.5" drive bay Ultra server 2029U has one Supermicro 25GbE RDMA supported NIC installed on each server node; and the BigTwin has one Supermicro SIOM card installed that offers dual-port 25GbE SFP 28 Mellanox ConnectX-4 and dual-port Intel 10GBase-T connectivity.

Category Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Premium
  SYS-6029U-E1CR4 SYS-2029U-E1CR4 SYS-2029BT-HNC0R
Reference BOM Check with FAE/OS Solution PM for details SYS-6029U-E1CR4-S2D SYS-2029U-E1CR4-S2D SYS-2029BT-HNC0R-S2D
Server SKU SYS-6029U-E1CR4 SYS-2029U-E1CR4 SYS-2029BT-HNC0R
OS Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition Included
Profile Hybrid Hybrid Hybrid
Form Factor 2U 2U 2U
Number of Systems 3 3 1
RDMA Yes Yes Yes
TPM 2.0 Yes Yes Yes
CPU Dual Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
Memory 128GB (up to 3TB DDR4-2666 per node) 128GB (up to 3TB DDR4-2666 per node) 128GB (up to 3TB DDR4-2666 per node)
HBA LSI 3008 LSI 3008 LSI 3008
NIC MCX353A-FCBT ConnectX-3 VPI 40GbE Supermicro AOC-S25G-m2S Supermicro SIOM Dual-port 25GbE SFP28 Mellanox ConnectX-4 and Dual-port Intel 10GBase-T
Storage Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor
Caching 1.6 TB NVMe 4 2.5" 15mm U.2 800GB NVMe 2 2.5" 15mm U.2 1.6TB NVMe 2 2.5" 15mm U.2
Capacity 10TB SATA HDD 8 3.5" U.2 2TB SATA HDD 6 2.5" U.2 1.6TB SATA3 4 2.5" U.2
Drive (OS) 2x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB) 2x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB) 2x M.2 SATA SSD 6Gb/s3D MLC (480GB)

Supermicro X10 HCI premium solutions

Supermicro X10 HCI Premium offer three SKUs. SYS-1028U-S2D is based on four 1U rackmount SYS-1028U-TN10RT+ Ultra servers; SYS-2028TP-S2D uses 2 2U SYS-2028TP-DNCTP TwinPro™ servers; SYS-F628R3-S2D has one 4U SYS-F628R3-RC0B+ FatTwin™ server.

All three SKUs are equipped with dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v4 processors, 128GB of DDR4 memory, NVMe SSDs (as cache devices), Supermicro 25GbE RDMA enabled network adapters on each server node.

Category Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Premium
  SYS-1028U-TN10RT+ SYS-2028TP-DNCTR SYS-F628R3-RC0B+
Reference BOM Check with FAE/OS Solution PM for details SYS-1028U-S2D SYS-2028TP-S2D SYS-F628R3-S2D
Server SKU SYS-1028U-TN10RT+ SYS-2028TP-DNCTR SYS-F628R3-RC0B+
OS Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition Included
Profile All-flash NVMe Hybrid Hybrid
Form Factor 1U 2U 4U
Number of Systems 4 2 1
RDMA Yes Yes Yes
TPM 2.0 Yes Yes Yes
CPU Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 family
Memory 128GB (up to 3TB per node) 128GB (up to 3TB per node) 128GB (up to 2TB per node)
HBA N/A LSI 3008 LSI 3008
NIC Supermicro AOC-S25G-m2S Supermicro AOC-S25G-m2S Supermicro AOC-S25G-m2S
Storage Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor
Caching 400GB NVMe 2 2.5" 15mm U.2 800GB NVMe 2 2.5" 15mm U.2 800GB NVMe 2 2.5" 15mm U.2
Capacity 2TB NVMe 6 2.5" 15mm U.2 2TB SATA3 HDD 6 2.5" U.2 6TB SATA HDD 6 3.5" U.2
Drive (OS) 2x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB) 1x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB) 2x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB)

Supermicro® Converged Software-Defined Storage (SDS) Solutions

Supermicro is now offering Converged Software-Defined Storage solutions that are built on a cluster of Supermicro's High-Performance All-NVMe/Hybrid SuperStorage server nodes, providing lower cost, enterprise-grade storage capacity for Hyper-V workloads, and a seamless replacement to traditional expensive SAN/NAS infrastructure without any compute cluster changes. Supermicro Converged SDS are perfect storage solutions to small/mid-sized IT environments because of its low cost, simplicity, as well as flexibility and cloud-scale traits.

Supermicro Converged SDS Specification

Supermicro Converged SDS offering is based on the 2U rackmount SSG-2028R-NR48N SuperStorage server featuring dual Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v4 product family, 128GB of DDR4 memory, NVMe SSDs as cache devices, as well as large bandwidth network adapters on each server node.

Supermicro Converged SDS diagram
Category Supermicro Converged Software-Defined Storage
  SSG-2028R-NR48N
Server SKU SSG-2028R-NR48N
Profile All Flash
Scalability 2 nodes
Form Factor 2x 2U
CPU Dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v4 product family
Memory 128GB (up to 3TB per node)
HBA N/A
SES Support N/A
NIC Intel 40GbE Dual Port
Capacity (per node) 48x 2.5" 15mm U.2 NVMe
Drive (OS) 2x 2.5" SATA (480GB)
Global SKU